


Breath of Heaven

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Asexual Castiel, Hurt Dean, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:16:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean is wounded and dying in Purgatory, Castiel returns from his self-imposed exile to help him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breath of Heaven

_Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod... with its crystal tide forever flowing by the throne of God?_

The melody carried on a slow-moving wave of fetid air, like the half-vocalized exhalations of a slumbering monster, before settling over the surface of the modest river that was currently threading its way through the forest terrain. It cut a path through the endless pattern of trees and dirt like a track of two-lane blacktop, but it was no more appealing for the novelty. For one thing, the water was undrinkable (because it wasn't really _water_ , precisely; instead it appeared to be only a muddier version of the surrounding banks, thick as syrup and black as Leviathan blood); and for another, it exuded a deeply unpleasant miasma of oily fog. The trees surrounded the river in a claustrophobic huddle, so thick and so tall that they blotted out the roof of the sky.

Dean continued to hum from his sitting position in the shadow of one of these trees, shivering and trying to ignore the chill that had been slowly advancing up his entire body for the last few hours, like a delayed attack of paralysis. He hadn't hummed the song—an old Baptist hymn from a few hundred years ago, which he'd picked up at some open-tent revival or another—out of any sort of religious sentiment, but because he'd run out of songs to hum three hours ago and this one just happened to be about a river. In point of fact, Dean actually liked the song, but he had never deigned to hum it in front of either his brother or his father (the former because he had an image of atheistic, devil-may-care bravado to hold up in front of Sammy; the latter because John would have deeply frowned upon his oldest son enjoying anything that couldn't be found on a classic rock LP). Being completely free to choose the soundtrack to your life was one of the few perks of Purgatory, Dean figured. One of the very, very, _very_ few perks.

Because, from the very beginning, Purgatory was a misnomer: just a prettied-up name for what was in fact another form of hell. It was a place of nightmare and horror, where creatures with glowing yellow eyes and fangs dripping with saliva—but more often blood—lurked in the shadows, regarded you with a flat and indifferent hunger. Where the forest ran to jungle and then to swamp and back to forest again, a labyrinthine construct of pure _alienness_ that was impossible to escape. (Like that book _Where the Wild Things Are_ , Dean thought, only with a lot less whimsy and a lot more decapitation.)

It had been difficult to make any headway, given the aforesaid endlessness of the place—maybe this was all Purgatory _was_ , and wasn't _that_ a fucking pleasant thought—but the obstacles Dean encountered proved to be even more unconducive to his progress. Frequently he was forced to slash away at stray tree limbs with his rusting machete, or found himself tripped up by enormous roots he'd missed in the full dark (and if he had a nickel for every time he'd fallen on a bed of thorns and come away with tiny chunks of meat missing from his hands and knees, he'd be Donald Trump), or set upon by monsters of varying sizes. Mostly standard fare like vampires and werewolves, but also freakier shit, like Purgatory's native carnivorous plant population ( _Sing it with me, kids! Liiiitle shop, liiiitle shop of horrors..._ ). His days mutated into an endless blur of fighting monsters and foraging for food; and for a time, time itself held no meaning.

And then, finally, there'd been a fight. Or, rather: _the_ fight. What his dad, in fact, would have called "one pisser of a brawl." It had involved most of the usual suspects—all of them in the neighborhood of humanoid, thankfully, or he wouldn't be alive to nurse the bitch of a migraine that now came pounding on the door of his abused noggin like an angry landlord—and while that wasn't noteworthy on its own, the Leviathan that had exploded out of the brush like a cannonball with teeth _was_. It immediately sunk its knifelike incisors into his left thigh, and the last thing Dean remembered before a curtain of blood descended over his vision and obliterated all remaining vestiges of the Righteous Man (if indeed the guy had ever existed at all) was the abject howl of agony that was torn from his throat. Swinging his machete blindly, he surrendered to the strangely beautiful music of wanton bloodshed, fell in step with the intimately ordered dance of savagery.

Ten minutes later—at least, he _thought_ that's how long it was—it was all over. Dean crawled away from the scene of the battle with oozing lacerations, a bleeding and swollen eye, a mosaic of blue-black-gray bruises on his chest, and (best of all) a skull that was fit to split like an eggshell. His leg looked (through what he could tell of the remaining good eye) like a damn hellhound's chew toy. His opponents, however, had fared much worse: their blood-strewn carcasses littered the landscape, limbs and heads and eyes and other things he didn't care to think about lying around in haphazard arrangements, like the raw materials of some fucked-up mad scientist's lab experiment.

Even as bad off as he was, Dean was still inclined to try and put a few miles between himself and the creatures while time still allowed. He'd bludgeoned the Leviathan's body to pieces, but that only offered him a temporary reprieve before the sonuvabitch did what Humpty Dumpty couldn't and put himself back together again. Which finally led him, in fits and starts, to the riverside.

Dean hummed the final bars of the song, watching the murky, sluggish currents of water march away from him, marveling at how much _this_ particular river didn't live up to its holy counterpart (unless you wanted to make the argument that Purgatory fell under God's purview, which he didn't). _Gather with the saints at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river... gather with the saints at the river that flows by the throne of God._

The weather had grown even colder in the interim following the battle. It hadn't quite graduated to snow, but mounds of the stuff still clung to the terrain here and there, and the tree he was leaning against occasionally dripped freezing water on his head and shoulders. When he looked up he saw a screen of filthy, ice-scummed pine branches, leaning down towards him with such tortuousness that they seemed almost to be leering at him. Dean's shivers grew more pronounced. If it turned out that even the _trees_ here were alive and had it out for him—Ents with a taste for human flesh, or something—then he was just plain fucked. He simply didn't have it in him to up and move himself elsewhere.

Dean sat there as the late afternoon passed into evening, for the first time unburdened by all manner of distraction (including a drink, which he suddenly decided he needed like air); and so he finally, reluctantly allowed himself the luxury of thinking. Naturally, those thoughts concerned the nature of sin.

_His_ sin.

_This is where I sent Amy Pond. And one of the vamps from Lenore's pack—I never even found out who he was. And that one poor girl who got turned, Lucy... shit, there's probably more._ Dean's heart throbbed in his chest, and not just from the injuries he'd sustained. He'd murdered so many monsters—or people with monster-esque qualities—that he couldn't even remember them all. And, worse: what if they'd all been killed here? Where did a monster go if it died in Monster Heaven? Could it really be that their souls were destroyed along with their bodies, cast into God's celestial junk heap and—

Dean bit his lip so hard that he drew fresh blood. _Purgatory's too good for me. Cas should have plunked my ass right back in hell. That's where I belong._

And then: _Fuck. Cas_. He'd been careful not to let his thoughts stray to the subject of the fallen angel so far, because then he'd lose his focus. He'd be too busy worrying about him, where he was and what he was doing—if he'd found a safe place to hole up, or if the Leviathans had made good on their promise of gobbling down angel food cake after all. Dean could not afford to ruminate on unanswerable questions. That was the kind of thing that got you killed.

But since he was stuck here anyway, not likely to survive through the night—if it wasn't the lingering migraine that did him in, then it would be the hypothermia; if not the hypothermia, then the dehydration; if not the dehydration, then the Hungry Hungry Hippos roaming this place; and _ad_ fucking _infinitum_ —he would allow himself to entertain at least a few theories.

Five minutes later, and he'd blown right through all of them, like the shortest, crappiest episode of MythBusters. The common denominator for each theory, the one thing that really stuck in his craw, boiled down to: _Cas didn't answer my prayers._ And if Cas didn't answer his prayers, that could only mean—

_Cas is dead. That's the only explanation that makes sense at this point... so, where would Cas go? He wasn't a monster. Well, he was in some ways, but he was still an angel. Where do angels go when they die?_

Approaching the fact of Cas's death like it was some kind of philosophical question helped distance Dean from the horrible aftermath that—sooner or later, but probably sooner—would be loosed upon his psyche. He knew that once it truly sunk into his brain, once he _truly_ understood that his best friend was dead and gone forever, he would scream and scream and bring the monsters running and that'd be the end of him.

Goddamnit. "I'm too old for this shit," he said aloud, in his best Danny Glover impression, trying to stave off the gooseflesh creeping up his arms. Then, to the air: "You better not have done something to get yourself killed, Cas. You'd make a pretty crappy Riggs."

The answering silence made his head hurt worse than usual, ironically. It was heavy, oppressive... as if all the creatures in the vicinity had suddenly decided to clear out. As if, in fact, there was Something Big out there, and that Something Big was currently sizing him up, trying to decide if he tasted better with ketchup or mustard. A moment later he could practically _feel_ the eyes on him, intelligent and probing.

"Come at me, then," he muttered. When nothing happened he closed his eyes, happy to take some of the strain off of the ruined one. It was high time he said his prayers, anyway.

"Cas... I'm only gonna do this one more time, and then I'm taking the longest nap of my life." _Haha, get it? Longest nap of my_ life? _Irony!_ "Anyway, you know the drill. How are you doing? Are you safe, wherever you are? You know I worry about you, man. As for me... well, uh, let's just say I gave as good as I got today. And what I _got_ was a solid ass-kicking." He related the tale to Cas, trying to paint as exciting a picture as possible: pausing for emphasis in certain places to create suspense, raising his voice in others, spicing up the parts that needed spicing up (if Cas was really stuck having to listen to Radio Dean every other day, he owed it to him to make things sound at least a little interesting). Sometimes this involved outright fabrication. Case in point:

"Oh, and there was also a Cyclops. You knew those were a thing, right? Well, I kicked its ass too. Its one eye couldn't see for shit and it was dumb as rocks. All I had to do was—"

He stopped. There was an enormous rustling sound, as though entire tree trunks were being uprooted and shunted aside. Something Big—which in his mind had suddenly been promoted to the enviable position of Something Really _Fucking_ Big—was still there, and it was slowly shuffling closer with each passing second. Dean smiled grimly but didn't open his eyes.

"I better wrap this up, Cas. I really hope you're all right, because pretty soon I won't be. I think I'm allowed to have one chick flick moment before I die, so I'll just say this..." He paused. Suddenly he had no idea what to say. His feelings for Castiel were as alien and confused as Castiel himself was. He supposed that's what happened when you shared a "profound bond" with a multi-dimensional wave of celestial intent.

But he knew for sure there was one thing that Castiel _was_ , and that was Dean's best friend.

"I'll miss you, Castiel," Dean said. "Take care of yourself for me. Okay? That's all I really want outta you. Good night and good luck, wherever you are."

Okay, so that was pretty lame, but he wasn't exactly a poet.

There was more rustling in the distance. Strangely, Dean felt no fear at all. He was too exhausted to be afraid; and it just didn't seem worth it to try to stay awake long enough to defend himself or escape. He retreated deeper into the darkness rising behind his closed eyelids, knowing that unconsciousness would claim him long before this creature did.

========

"Hello, Dean."

Dean's eyes flew open. Castiel was standing there before him, whole and unharmed, his eyes and mouth set in an expression of untold sorrow. Any signs of the creature that had been approaching moments ago were gone. Dean's heart suddenly tightened in an invisible vice grip, and for a moment he had trouble drawing full breaths. "Cas, is that you?" he said, not even caring how desperate he sounded at that moment.

"Yes, it's me. How are you feeling?" Cas stepped forward, his tone colored with concern, as if he _hadn't_ been missing ever since they'd had the misfortune of being dumped here. "You've been badly hurt." He said the words _badly hurt_ as if they were actually _fatally wounded_.

For several moments Dean couldn't say anything, overwhelmed as he was by relief. Something inside of him actually relaxed for the first time since the angel's disappearance—he hadn't even noticed how tense with worry he'd been without Castiel by his side. Then the hunter's characteristic flippancy resurfaced, and he said: "What do you think? I feel like I just got hit by a—" He stopped. "Wait a second, is this even for real, or am I dreaming?" _It would just fucking figure if I was making all this up_ , he thought sourly.

Cas tilted his head and his mournful expression abated slightly. "You're dreaming, but that doesn't make this not real," he said in his slow, careful monotone, as if Dean had asked a particularly silly question.

"And now he's quoting Dumbledore," Dean said—rolling his good eye, because he still wasn't convinced this wasn't _just_ a dream.

Cas's mouth turned down in a frown. "I don't understand that reference."

"Of course you wouldn't." Dean scoffed.

"I can assure you, Dean, I'm really here. I heard your prayer." And there it was again, that worried tone that Dean recognized as so uniquely Castiel's. He was pretty sure his dreaming brain couldn't manufacture that kind of reaction; he didn't regard himself highly enough for that. Dean shook his head (it still felt like it was going to split in half; even in his dreams he couldn't catch a break) and growled:

"Well, in the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, you've got some explaining to do. Where the _hell_ have you been, Cas?"

"I was..." For a split-second Cas favored him with a desperate, guilty expression, but it quickly cleared. Before Dean could think to ask what was wrong, he smoothly continued: "I was away."

Dean felt a heat born of frustration spread over his cheeks, but he tried to push the feeling down. After all, Cas was here now; that was the main thing. "Yeah, no shit you were away, Sherlock. I want to know _where_ you went away to."

"As far away from you as I had to go." And then, upon seeing the expression of astonished hurt that descended over Dean's features, he quickly amended in a wavering voice: "It—it wasn't safe. You have to understand that. It's... something about Purgatory. It seems that in order to exist here, entities must be broken down into their purest, truest essence."

"Explain," Dean said in clipped tones. "I don't speak new agey mumbo-jumbo."

"I felt it the moment we arrived here. My Grace was leaking out of my vessel, threatening to overwhelm it; a few minutes more, and it would have been utterly destroyed." Cas looked at him, solemn as the grave. "Along with anyone else unfortunate enough to be standing in my presence."

Dean felt his body temperature drop even lower in response to that, but he kept his face carefully blank. "I don't get it, Cas. How would that have destroyed me?"

"Because. You would have seen who I truly was. You would have seen... me." Castiel said the final word as if it was a slur. It killed Dean inside to hear such self-directed hatred in the angel's voice. "That is what Purgatory does to monsters. It exposes them."

_Is that what's been happening to me?_ Dean wondered despairingly—remembering the dance of bloodlust that he'd willingly partaken in, shifting like smoke from human to hunter to monster—but there were more important things to attend to just then. "Don't give me that bullcrap," he hissed. "You're no more a monster than the rest of us. Sam's killed people... _I've_ killed people... I mean, you—" He stopped when he realized that he wasn't making things any better. Cas looked away and said nothing. "So what did you end up doing?" he went on, hesitantly.

"I flew as far away as I could, then abandoned my vessel. I return periodically in order to keep the body alive, but for the most part I am a true angel now."

"Hold up. Let me get this straight." Dean ran a hand through his hair, grimaced when he fetched up against a baseball-sized knot, and drew a deep breath. There were a couple of things that didn't add up here, but he decided he was going to focus on the most obvious one. _And safest_. "You left your vessel—Jimmy Novak, the _loving father and radio ad time salesman_ —to fight off gorilla-wolves and fuck knows what else?"

"Actually, Jimmy is... how would you put it? He's not home anymore. The first time I was resurrected, his soul was left behind." Cas averted his eyes again. Dean knew the angel eternally blamed himself for how he'd wrecked Jimmy's life. "It was the best fate for him, all things considered. He's with God now."

"Yeah? Last time I checked, Heaven was sorely lacking in the benevolent deity department."

Cas looked at him, and the sadness in his face almost made the hunter relent. Cas obviously hadn't done the things he had out of malice, but Dean was like a chick (or his dad) in more ways than one: he held grudges, and he held them long. Feeling guilty, but unable to dial back the hostility, he said: "Did you at least let his wife and kid know that he's gone?"

"Dean—" Cas was frustrated now. "Yes, of course, I tried to reach out to his family. But I couldn't find them. In the end, I hid them too well."

"Well that's just great." Dean sighed. "Okay, first thing when we get out of this hellhole, we're gonna do a little detective work, and—why are you smiling?" Cas was regarding him with one of his awkward smiles, his eyes crinkled at the corners. It was a good look for him, but _he_ wasn't about to admit that.

"You said _when we get out_. Before, I got the impression that you had given up all hope of escape."

"How else was I supposed to feel, Cas? You _abandoned_ me." Dean's heart sank as he reconsidered Cas's words, coming around now to the thing he'd been holding off on addressing. "You heard all of my prayers, didn't you?"

Cas's smile faded. "Yes. Every one."

"And you still didn't—"

"I told you. If I came to you as I am now, you would be—"

This time Dean welcomed the rage that sparked through his throbbing brain. "So why didn't you just do the mind-meld thing? You could have done that any time, Cas. All you had to do was go into one of my dreams and say _Hey Dean, sorry I can't come to the phone right now, but I just wanted to let you know I haven't been ripped apart by Leviathans yet._ Christ, half the time I thought you were dead."

Cas looked at him, apparently shocked. _And what the hell for?_ "That's why you're upset? You thought I was dead?"

"Yes, you featherbrained idiot. And also I'm hungry, exhausted, freezing, blind in one eye, and—oh yeah— _I can't fucking walk_."

Cas's eyes remained wide and his mouth set tight in shock; and Dean found himself softening towards the angel by slow degrees. Whatever else could be said about their relationship, it seemed that he could never really stay mad at the guy.

"Listen, is this... because of your problem?" he asked. "You left because you're still all turned around inside?" A modicum of hope that this was the case—that Cas wouldn't have left him if he had been in his right mind, _couldn't_ have left him—shone in his voice.

"I..." Dean pretended he didn't hear the hesitation in Cas's voice. "Yes, I suppose. For a long time I didn't feel like myself. But with the shedding of my vessel, I've slowly been getting better."

"That's a relief," Dean said without irony. There was a brief silence as the impact of Cas's appearance continued to fully sink in. Before the silence could grow awkward, he gave a slight cough and asked: "So, uh... what brought you here tonight?"

"For the obvious reason. You're dying." Cas's eyes narrowed, as though in disapproval. "I'm here to heal you."

Dean smiled. "Get to it then, medicine man." Then, as Cas was stepping forward, an ominous thought suddenly occurred to him. "Wait, hang on a second. If you're _here_ —in my dream, I mean—then what's to stop some monster from chomping down on the _real_ me? Earlier, I felt something... watching me."

"Oh. That." An unusual expression touched Cas's face, and Dean realized it was embarrassment. "That was me. I'm still watching over you, actually."

Dean blinked at him for several moments. Then, with a laugh: "Dude, no way. You told me you were the size of the Chrysler building. I'd _know_ if it was you."

The embarrassed look didn't leave Cas's face. "It was one of my... limbs. The rest of my body was several miles away."

Dean worked to process this. "So, what you're telling me is that you have tentacles—"

"If that's the parlance you wish to use—"

"—and somehow they can _see_ me." Dean shook his head, marveling at the weirdness that was his life. Apparently angels were Cthulhu-type monsters now. He'd sort of assumed that the reason people couldn't look at them was because they were too beautiful and holy or something—giants of sanctifying light. "Holy shit."

"My entire body is covered with eyes." Cas sighed. "I knew this would disturb you."

"No, man," Dean replied, although Cas wasn't entirely wrong. "I think it's pretty cool, actually." _My guardian angel could take on Godzilla._ "Anyway, go ahead and do your thing."

"My _thing_ is..." Cas hesitated briefly. "My conventional method of healing can't be done in dreams. I will have to do something different in order to reverse your injuries. I'm not sure you'll like it."

The throbbing in Dean's head worsened, along with his impatience. "Look, unless it involves sacrificing babies or something, I don't really care. Just get to it, whatever it is."

"All right, then." Cas nodded, and seconds later Dean realized just how wrong he was when the angel knelt over his body, placing his knees on either side of his legs and leaning forward so that his tie fell against his chest.

"Uh, Cas?" Cas ignored him and placed his hands on his shoulders. To say he was invading Dean's personal space was an understatement. This was practically sexual harassment, and Dean opened his mouth to say so, when Cas dipped down and brought their foreheads together. The hunter gasped with surprise at the contact—and then, with wonder as energy surged through his skull, pushing all of the pain out, like a boil being lanced and drained of pus. A wonderful feeling blossomed deep inside his brain, and Dean realized that it was the same endorphine-laced euphoria that always followed once you got over a really bad illness or scratched a huge mosquito bite or finally got to take that piss you'd been holding for the last three hours. He involuntarily shuddered with pleasured relief. It didn't help that Cas's skin was incredibly warm, melting the icicles in his brain. _I always thought Cas would be as cold as he looked. Man, was I wrong._

Cas pulled back—still regarding him, as always, with that thousand-yard stare that Dean knew should have made him feel uncomfortable but somehow never did—and said simply, "It's working."

"Cas, what—" Dean started to say, but didn't even get that far as Cas leaned forward again, brought his lips to the hunter's ruined eye. Dean's mouth went dry and his throat constricted, watching as Cas's mouth came closer and closer, filling his vision. For one crazy moment he thought the angel was going to kiss him, but Cas did something even stranger than that.

His lips slowly parted, and he _breathed_.

If Dean's head had felt good before, his eye felt even better. Cas's breath was like a healing balm, warmer even than his skin, and the pressure surrounding Dean's eye eased off tremendously. He knew without having to look that the ugly yellow bruises it had sustained were fading, as well. Cas breathed on him again—again and again, he breathed on him—and Dean soaked up the warmth seeping into his ice-cold skin like a plant absorbing the sun's rays, blinking slowly. When Cas next spoke, his voice was very soft.

"This is a manifestation of my Grace, touching your soul. It has to be given in small doses, so you won't be overwhelmed." He didn't move his mouth away while speaking, and Dean watched his lips form words with confused fascination. "The changes work both within and without. When you wake up, you should be completely well."

Without waiting for Dean's affirmation that he understood—or complaints for him to stop molesting him—the angel's lips slowly traveled over the rest of his face, exhaling deep breaths that relaxed his constricted blood vessels, softened his frigid skin. He even breathed on Dean's chapped lips, restoring their tenderness. Dean felt his face flush, both from embarrassment and the feelings of complete contentment that washed over him.

"It's... your Grace is really warm," he managed to get out after a moment.

"It's warm because I want it to be warm." Castiel's voice contained a hint of aggravation. "On top of your wounds, you are also suffering from hypothermia. Your propensity for putting your body in danger is irritating."

"Yeah... well _your_ propensity is... um." Dean couldn't counter with a witty one-liner when Castiel was doing the things he did. The angel had Dean's hands in his now, rubbing the open, bleeding wounds with delicate fingers, and it should have hurt like hell but didn't. Instead his palms tingled as the missing flesh reconstructed itself. At the same time Castiel moved from Dean's face to his neck, which soon heated up as if he were wearing one of those hot spa towels. Dean swallowed reflexively. His thoughts came to him as though moving through a sea of molasses, exquisitely unhurried. He felt tiny and weak beneath the gentle power of Cas's Grace, and that was just fine. He thought that he wanted to wrap himself up in it like a cocoon—just tunnel his way inside Cas's body and lie there forever and sleep and be _warm_.

"This is not altogether different from when I reconstructed your body after hell," Cas was saying now, and Dean barely heard him even as he raised his eyes. "Angels are really nothing more than breath—God's breath—and I put some of mine in you as a means of reviving your body."

"That would explain a few things," Dean said, but his mind was elsewhere. In the past he'd often heard street preachers make grand proclamations about "God's grace," and while Sam seemed to understand the concept, Dean never had. Was _this_ what it was, he wondered? God rescuing a broken, bloodied thing from the garbage—a thing that deserved only contempt, not salvation—and making it whole again? Breathing it back to life, assuring His love, comfort, and endless mercy?

The thought was terrifying in its beauty, and Dean nearly wept. He put up no resistance when Cas lifted his shirt and traced his fingers over the jagged scars on his chest, putting them to rights with his Grace. Dean's heartbeat doubled, then trebled. It was at this point that he realized he was turned on— _had_ been for a while, in fact—and panic penetrated his blissful stupor. _Oh, my God. Oh, no._ Clearly this act of healing was business as usual for Cas, and if he saw that Dean was responding with a freaking _erection_ —

Cas's hand went to his hip where there was a mottled bruise, and if the angel saw the visible bulge in Dean's jeans, it didn't seem to warrant enough importance to comment on. Instead he massaged the skin and it cleared. Dean bit his lip in an attempt to push down the groan that rose in his throat like an irrepressible case of hiccups. He hadn't realized just how badly he'd missed the touch of another person until now, and as clumsy as Cas was in most human matters, he could have sworn the guy was a masseuse in another life; his fingers were _that_ damn talented on his neglected flesh, penetrating deep into his muscles and innervating the sluggish flow of blood. He shivered with pleasure for a second time and Cas—mistakenly thinking that the cold was setting back in—pressed his whole body right up against him, suffusing him with a heat so intense that those few inches of irrational longing in Dean's boxers increased exponentially. Before he could stop himself he was contorting his entire body in an effort to draw the angel closer to himself—wrapping his arms around his back and beneath the tent of his trenchcoat, drawing his legs up (he suddenly realized that he could move them again—when had _that_ happened?) so that they bracketed Cas's ass and pushed him forward, pinning Dean to the tree like a stuck butterfly.

"Dean?" There was a question in Cas's voice now, although Dean couldn't really hear it over the roaring of the angel's heartbeat against his ear. Everything was darkness and warmth and he could pretend he was curled up in the palm of Cas's hand, like when he would wedge himself into the floor of the Impala as a kid and listen to the engine's comforting rumble, safe from vamps and werewolves and Leviathans and all those other sons of bitches—

"Dean." The voice came to him again, and this time he couldn't ignore it. A shaft of daylight penetrated his self-made womb and Cas was staring at him. He looked very worried. "What's wrong?"

He spoke as if he'd made some kind of terrible mistake, and if Dean hadn't been drunk with Grace he would have laughed at the incongruity—how one moment Cas could be as impassive as the T-1000, the next as bumblingly insecure as any human. "Cas, please, don't stop," he panted, trying to return to his sanctuary, but Cas held him fast.

"I don't understand," he said, and then he blinked and his eyes slid downward. "Oh," he said, frowning at Dean's boner. "You're aroused. That must be confusing for you. I'm sorry."

"Don't say that." Dean continued to clutch at the angel helplessly. "Just please, Cas, don't stop healing me—"

"But there's nothing left to heal." Cas sounded truly at a loss now. He returned his gaze to Dean's face, and the hunter could swear he saw an entire fucking solar system dancing behind his rapidly blinking eyelids, like Grace was really just another universe that happened to leak out of angels' bodily orifices once in a while.

_Then heal my soul_ , Dean thought, and he _knew_ Cas could hear him, _knew_ Cas could understand even without reading his thoughts, _heal this great big pile of fucking nothing that I've become, because I can't take one more second without—_

"I can't do that, Dean." Cas's voice was very gentle, reminding Dean that—in his own weird, inscrutable, _Cas-_ like way—he really did love him. It was infused with equal amounts of sorrow. "That would require me to use all of my Grace. And my Grace is... it's tainted."

"Tainted? What are you talking about?"

"You know."

"What? No, I don't."

"You do." The angel's grief was unmistakable. "I killed so many innocent people. The humans I'd sworn to love and protect, crushed by an arrogant creature who thought himself God... and the Leviathans—they very nearly finished the work I'd started. I can't help you, Dean. I can't help anyone." The galaxies in his eyes splintered off into manifold prisms of light—he was crying. Had Cas ever even _done_ that before? "All I can do is watch over you and ease your pain a little."

They had come full circle now, turning inexorably from hatred back to hatred; and Dean's heart plummeted in his bowels as he— _finally_ —grasped to the fullest extent what it was that had been bothering him all this time.

"You son of a bitch," he hissed. And then, because that didn't seem nearly severe enough: "You _fucking asshole_. You never planned to find me at all. You never planned to leave Purgatory!"

He waited for Castiel to deny it—was hoping, praying for it—but the angel looked away in silence, the tears continuing to cut a path down his cheeks. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"I prayed to you _every day_ , Cas! How could you—"

"I know! I know that you prayed. And every time you did, I would pray to my Father. I asked Him to make you give up on me. I even prayed that you'd hate me—easier to hate me than believe me dead and grieve. It was agony, listening to you call out for me, day after day. More than anything I wished I _could_ die, but I couldn't do that yet... not without making sure you were safely out of Purgatory."

"Why would you do that to me, Cas? In what _fucking universe_ do you think I would just give up on you like that? Does our friendship just not mean two shits to you? Did it ever mean _anything_ to you?"

"I'm sorry..."

" _I'm sorry._ Is that all you can say? Fuck you."

"Dean—" When Dean turned his head away from him, dismissing him in a single gesture (an art that he had picked up from his father, and one that only he had ever been able to perfect), the angel's voice grew even more ragged. "I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Dean felt a dry sob escape his throat. When he sensed Castiel beginning to rise, he turned his head back and seized the angel by his disheveled collar; even in the face of this terrible betrayal, he refused to let him run away so easily, to let him return to the slough of despond he'd been wallowing in all this time. There was a sharp intake of air as Cas gasped with surprise, but he remained still.

"Don't you ever—don't you ever leave me, Cas," Dean uttered savagely; and now he knew that _he_ was the one crying, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting through Cas's stupid head how important he was. How important he was to _him._ "Promise me!"

Castiel was silent for a very long time, looking down at him, slowly blinking away tears. "I do. I promise," he finally said in a whisper, and his whisper came in yet another soft, gentle exhalation of air. The tightness in Dean's crotch resumed and he suddenly remembered that he still had an erection. He drew Cas closer, bringing their foreheads together, locking his eyes with the angel's own.

"I want you to heal me. Please. I want—" For a moment coherent thought was driven out of his head, as he became aware of Cas's scent for the first time. He had no words to describe it, other than that it conveyed irresistible comfort and warmth. He plunged into his next words, not realizing that only a few minutes ago there wouldn't have been enough money in the world that could move him to utter them. "I want you to make me feel something... make me feel something good for once. Please, Cas."

"You—you want me to—?"

"Yes. I want you."

Cas looked at him helplessly. "I don't even know what to do. This body..."

"Your Grace, then. You know how to use that, right?"

"But Dean, I'm not—my Grace isn't—"

" _I don't care._ Look at me. Do I look like I'm clean? From the very beginning, you knew me as well as I knew myself—maybe even better. You keep telling me how God forgives everyone's sins, mine included. You think _you're_ special enough to be exempt from that?"

Cas looked at him as if the thought had honestly never crossed his mind. The galaxies in his eyes tilted crazily, a window into his utter state of confusion. Dean seized him by the shoulders, pulled him closer.

"I'm telling you this, from one sinner to another. I _love_ you, Cas. I need you. Please—" He didn't know what more he could say, what more he could do to make the angel understand. After what seemed an agonizing eternity, Cas finally nodded.

"Tell me what you want me to do, then."

_Kiss me_ , Dean almost said. He reached out with eager fingers to touch Cas's wet, unshaven cheek, imagining the press of his mouth against his own. But—more than Jimmy Novak's lips—he realized that he wanted something else. He wanted Castiel _himself_. And so instead he said, in a trembling voice:

"Breathe on me."

========

At first, Dean couldn't make sense of what he was looking at. It was like trying to perceive an object in five dimensions, or suss out the contents of a black hole. He looked and he looked and as much as he tried to delineate the lines and curves and flavors and hues and melodies (even his senses were confused to the degree that he could _see_ music and _hear_ colors), the result was no different from trying to describe a wicked acid trip after the fact.

If seeing Cas's true form was supposed to melt his eyeballs, then looking at his Grace should have vaporized his soul.

"Are you surprised?" Cas said, and even though he hadn't budged from his kneeling position in front of Dean, the hunter was only peripherally aware of his physical form. The _real_ Castiel was floating right above it, an ether that flowed out of Jimmy Novak's back like a pair of liquid wings. "This is the truest approximation of God's being. He breathed all of us into existence, but angels most fundamentally represent that existence—something that humans cannot perceive even a fraction of. I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of dark matter? Well, dark matter makes up only a small part of what I am."

For long minutes (or was it hours?) Dean stared, his eyes clouding over with tears. Then he grinned and muttered, "Quit bragging."

He felt Cas's smile, a thing that reached down and surrounded him and sank into his pores, imparting a gently ticklish sensation. Dean tried not to giggle. "Dude, this is like being at the planetarium on LSD. Actually it's not like that at all, but—fuck, you know what I mean."

"Yes. I do. Are you ready?"

"No."

Cas's smile became a laugh, and Dean gasped as the ticklish sensations graduated to intensely pleasurable vibrations, causing blood to rush to his cock in eager leaps and bounds; suddenly he was dangerously close to orgasm. "Cas, _God_ , don't do that," he said in a strangled whisper, squeezing his eyes shut. The vibrations stopped.

"I'm sorry," Cas said. "Being a human for so long has made me forget how sensitive you all are." Dean felt a hand stroking his cheek, and he opened his eyes to look into Cas's human face, which regarded him with a rare tenderness. Strangely, the angel seemed more expressive now than he ever had since Dean had met him—maybe it had something to do with his Grace being given a chance to get out of the car and stretch. The stars and dust clouds had also departed from his eyes, which burned a bright blue. "Come here, then."

Dean shuffled forward obediently and Cas drew their faces together. This time Dean welcomed the nearness; moans fell freely from his lips as the angel carded his fingers through his hair, and when Cas opened his mouth to breathe on him a second time, Dean lunged forward and kissed him—hard—shoving his tongue in, trying to taste the human Cas even as the angel Cas must be tasting him.

Cas responded to this with a bitten-off little moan and pushed Dean's face away gently, and the rest of his Grace came rushing through the gap between them, inundating every cell of the hunter's being. Cas's breath—his _true_ breath—wrapped around him, bore him into the air, rocked him like a mother; but Cas's human arms were still holding him, hadn't left him, and Dean clung to the familiar sensation of being held like an anchor even as Cas's Grace began to play an utterly alien melody of pleasure between his legs ( _like getting my cock sucked off but better so much better_ he thought), and every moment Dean expected to come but didn't.

"Cas, how the hell are you—" he tried to say, but the increasing delirium made it hard to talk. Cas tilted his head.

"Blame it on my mojo," he said. His human voice was deadpan but the angel was _definitely_ laughing at him; Dean could feel pure Grace vibrating in his bones, inciting new waves of pleasure while carefully preventing him from climaxing. He gave a brief cry when it suddenly surged into a hard knot at the base of his cock, a lump of sexual tension that screamed for release.

"Oh, you son of a bitch," he hissed, only half in jest. "Angels aren't supposed to know how to tease."

"It's not teasing, exactly," Cas replied. "With my Grace joined to your body like this, I know exactly how to maximize your pleasure, while also preventing any premature emissions."

"Has anyone ever told you you suck at dirty talk?" Dean muttered. A blasphemous idea occurred to him, and without thinking he plunged both legs through the prismatic ocean surrounding him, bracketing Cas's waist. He seized Cas's neck and began to slowly, deliberately rub his crotch up against that wonderful heat; it responded with gentle massages that were equally slow and infinitely knowledgeable. He felt Cas's arms tighten around his back, which encouraged him to rock even harder. "You can't hold me off forever," he grunted.

Cas raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm millions of years old, Dean," he said with quiet amusement. "This isn't a battle you're going to win."

"That's... that's what you think." _Although I sure as hell don't want to win if this is how it's going to feel._ Dean's cock sang with each thrust of his hips against Cas (both the angel and the human), and yet the ecstasy in his groin never terminated in an orgasm, instead maintaining itself on a steady, agonizing thread. When the heat finally proved to be too much and sweat broke out on his forehead, tendrils of Grace kissed it away. He watched them work with a child's wonder, and then he felt himself being turned over on his back, thousands of whispering voices—a shade of Castiel's real voice—caressing him in a steady rhythm.

_Do you want to come, Dean?_ they asked him.

"Yes," he groaned, and then he realized he was barely vocalizing above a whisper. "Yes," he said again, louder. That incomprehensible substance threaded around him even more tightly in response, and when Dean closed his eyes he could see chalky-white swirls and brilliant purple flashes of light and colors that it shouldn't have even been _possible_ for a human like him to see: colors that existed far beyond his puny comprehension of the electromagnetic spectrum. He was so close to orgasm now that a single breath could push him over the edge. A supplicating whine rose in his throat.

"Oh God, please, yes, _Cas_ —"

_Open your eyes. I want to watch you._

He did so, and he wasn't surprised to see Cas floating there above him, staring into his face intently. He reached out for the angel and pulled him down on top of him. He tried to get his legs around him again, but Cas's weight was an immutable force that kept his body completely immobile, completely helpless. At the same time, Cas's hand closed on the curve of his throat. Another pleasuring tremor rocked through Dean's body, layering over the symphony of bliss, but he still didn't come. He almost screamed right then, just so he could feel the release of _something_... and that was when the voices spoke to him again, gentle and soft.

_I promise that I will never leave you again, Dean._

His human mouth did not move as he spoke, but Dean's eyes were drawn to it anyway, like a flower helplessly turning its face towards the sun. It seemed to him now that it held the promise of relief from this exquisite torture. "Don't leave me, Cas," he murmured, and when it turned upward in a smile he thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

_I won't. I love you._

Grace hummed inside him, leaped forth, drew up into the size of a pin within the pounding chamber of his heart; and Dean realized that Castiel was inhaling. Terror at the enormity of the thing he was doing beset him just then— _I just convinced an_ angel of the Lord _to get little old me off_ —and his body unconsciously tensed, as if whatever hit him next might kill him. Castiel's smile became one of exasperated fondness and he flicked Dean's nose.

_Humans really are fickle. One minute you decide you want something, and the next you've completely changed your mind._

"What are you talking about?" Dean managed to get out, although he thought he already knew.

_Submit, Dean. You need to submit. It won't feel good otherwise._

Dean swallowed the lump of fear that threatened to come tunneling up his throat. "How?"

_Think back to when you were a child. Children don't question their own happiness. They just dwell in it, like beasts in the field or birds in the air. Even angels know this._

"I have no idea how to do that," Dean protested. "I mean—Cas, I was never really a kid!"

_There was a time. Try and remember those feelings. Put them deep down inside you._

Dean tried. He thought of his mom—Mary Winchester, a loving mother and wife, and still to this day the most beautiful woman in the world—looking after him when he was little. Telling him he didn't have to be afraid of the monsters in his closet when she tucked him in at night. He thought of birthday parties and games of tag and getting to hold his baby brother in his lap. He thought of times when monsters really _were_ nothing more than a figment of his imagination... and bit by bit, he began to reclaim himself from that deep dark place that John Winchester had dragged him down into in his misguided pursuit of revenge.

Bad habits died hard. They died especially hard after thirty-plus years, and Dean Winchester had always been nothing if not a closed-off human being. (And even then, it could be argued that he wasn't a human being, not really... he was Daddy's little tool, Sammy's brother _and_ mother, a hunter who killed things and saved people)—

—but for Castiel, he would shed all those labels. He would submit.

He felt Grace shifting tremulously inside him, encouraging him. He suddenly realized that he was naked. He didn't know when that had happened. Cas's coattails billowed about him as he drew himself even closer to Dean, and the hand on his throat moved to grip his hair. Dean's body went completely limp as the angel tilted his head back. For one eternal moment he could see his own reflection, frozen in the ice of Castiel's eyes. Then long lashes tipped forward, obscuring the sight like a curtain; and Castiel's mouth—that gentle, chaste, and yet endlessly erotic mouth—opened for him one last time. He squirmed with boneless anticipation.

Castiel's mouth fell on his own. His lips were warm and dry and Dean welcomed them. An instant later the angel exhaled with a force that was at once explosive and sweet—a blast of wind that was nevertheless like smooth oil and scented honey and the crispest, most refreshing whiskey he'd ever tasted. Grace pulsed inside him—a molten heartbeat—and Dean's body began to convulse. Castiel held him steady. He was afraid, and yet totally divorced from any feelings of fear; instead they felt like they were happening to someone else. The blood in his veins ceased to exist as Grace sparked through them, delivering spiritual nourishment to every organ in his body; and for a moment he _was_ a celestial thing, _was_ an angel named Castiel, and he felt the things that Castiel felt, and knew the things that Castiel knew, and what Castiel felt and knew was that he loved Dean Winchester—

And that revelation _opened_ him. To life, to love, to the endless opportunities for joy that daily existed in the universe, things he'd been so blind to as a limited human creature. He remembered the person he'd been

_(There's no such thing as angels, Sammy)_

and the person he was now

_(I love you, Cas)_

and maybe the person that he _could_ be, if he tried hard enough.

His world was wide now: wider even than the open roads of his childhood, so that he was moving with Castiel in glory among the stars, singing songs unto their Creator until kingdom come.

The awakening in his mind paralleled the reactions in his body. His lungs expanded. His heart pounded thunderously. His skin grew as moist and porous as a sponge. And finally—when it seemed he could take no more—sobs were torn from his throat and he came, his cock jerking back and forth in a perfect rhythm, erupting with a sticky heat that soaked his thighs, dripped down the sides of his stomach. He reached out for Cas, only to shudder and fall back helplessly as the angel's breath slowly flowed out of his body like water, rolling sinuously over every single pleasure center, easing even more semen out of the spent flesh. The seal between their lips remained unbroken, and Dean found himself offering up muffled cries to the warm prison of Castiel's mouth, which graciously rewarded his every whimper and moan with sweet, hot draughts of air. He felt veins bulge and elongate along the length of his shaft as curls of Grace wrapped around the head, pulling the foreskin taut, peeling it back, _inhale, exhale_ , creating the most delicious friction he had ever known; and with a soundless scream he evacuated a final, streaming arc of seed.

========

As it so happened, being administered the angelic equivalent of a blowjob made picking up the scattered, far-flung pieces of reality (some of which had to be in freaking China by now) _much_ harder. For long moments Dean let himself white out, the canvas of pure, perfect colors he'd seen fading into the corners of his vision, marching like stragglers in a footrace, until they were no more. He wondered, vaguely and without much interest, if he was going blind. Meanwhile, the echoes of his orgasm continued to draw light, spidery patterns inside his groin. He only truly came to when he felt a hand running through his hair.

He was back in his sitting position against the tree, wearing clothes that looked and smelled as if they had been freshly laundered. He looked up, and Castiel looked back at him. He couldn't see Cas's Grace anymore, but he could still feel traces of its glory peppering the area, transmuting its wanton ugliness into a sort of untamed beauty: the trees stooped with vibrant, oversized curls of foliage, and the river seemed suddenly clearer, wider and turbulent with life. He shivered with a sudden aching nostalgia, relaxing into the angel's touch.

"How do you feel?" Castiel asked him.

"Good," Dean said, once he had found his voice. He thought for a moment, then amended (in what yet remained a massive understatement): "Really, really fucking good."

"I'm glad," Cas said. It was weird hearing him speak with Jimmy Novak's voice, now that he'd heard (or kind of heard) Cas's _real_ voice. The gravelly monotone didn't help ease his mood whiplash, either. "I thought I might have hurt you."

Dean shook his head and struggled to get his breathing under control. Castiel, by contrast, only continued to look at him, perfectly steady and unruffled. In fact, he seemed _especially_ angelic at that moment, and that irritated Dean—if there was one thing he had to say he didn't like about Cas, it was the marble-esque stoicity that only served to remind him how much bigger— _holier_ —Castiel was. It made Dean feel like an ant, although he was sure Cas didn't think of him that way. (At least, not anymore.)

"So I noticed you weren't really into it like I was," he finally said, hating the way the words sounded coming out of his mouth.

Cas looked puzzled. " _Into it_? I'm not sure what you mean."

"Well... you know..." And now that this was after the fact, Dean realized he felt self-conscious discussing sex with Castiel. He was pretty sure—nay, pretty _damn convinced_ —that he was gay, and revelations like that tended to wreak havoc on a guy's understanding of himself. "I don't think you even had a hard-on. It was like we were operating on different levels or something." _Maybe it didn't mean as much to you_ , was what he realized he was too afraid to add. And wouldn't _that_ be a hoot and a half, given all the girls he'd ditched in the past?

Cas, as per his usual perceptiveness in all things Dean, sensed the insecurity and subtle self-loathing. He frowned. "You have to understand, Dean. I'm an angel, not a human. We don't have the capacity to experience sexual attraction." Cas continued to pet his hair and Dean grasped his wrist lightly, silently willing his hand to stay there. "But I _will_ say this: it gave me immense joy to pleasure you the way that I did."

Dean thought about that. He supposed it made a strange, Cas-like kind of sense—after all, the angel had been nothing but intimate and tender when he'd been getting Dean off. And those kinds of feelings—that kind of _love_ —was something that Dean hungered after most deeply. Most especially, at the moment of climax—

He shivered. It probably wasn't a good idea to think too much about it, lest he find himself chomping at the bit to get fucked again. Although now he was wondering about the _other_ things Cas might be able to accomplish with his mojo. Such as, for example, whether or not he could make it so Dean came several times in a row, like some of the chicks he'd been with sometimes did.

Castiel's hand left his hair, began to meditatively stroke his cheek. "It's time for you to sleep now."

"But I _am_ asleep," Dean protested, pointedly ignoring his post-coital drowsiness. "This is a dream, remember?"

Cas smiled. "Don't be a smartass." Still cupping Dean's face, he leaned forward and kissed his eyes. His mouth moved with an awkward stiffness, but the Grace that streamed out between his parted lips was a different story—it flicked his eyelashes playfully, threaded through the hair in his eyebrows so that it stood on end, like a kind of erotic gooseflesh. Dean eased Cas's mouth down onto his, and Grace exploded on his tongue in a paroxysm of flavor. He eagerly swallowed it down—it had an acrid salty flavor that he could have sworn Cas had summoned just for this occasion, so that it was like he was tasting his own come.

Long moments passed before Cas broke off the kiss. "Sleep now," he whispered. He raised his hand to touch his temple, but Dean grabbed his wrist, holding him off.

"And when I wake up? You'll still be there?" He knew that he had to sound like a little kid seeking reassurance from its parents, but he didn't care.

"Yes. In some form, I will be at your side. I keep my promises, Dean." _Especially to you_ , he didn't have to add. There was a slight shifting of air on Dean's right, and he turned to see new tendrils of Grace rising to embrace him. They curled around his neck, inviting him to rest his head upon them. Dean leaned into them and felt himself growing light-headed, like he was floating through a rapidly thinning atmosphere; but the light-headedness was pleasant, accompanied by a delicate fragrance that seemed to assuage his every fear. He surrendered to the gentle petting touches of Cas's Grace, which waved like the tentacles of some undersea plant. When he tried to keep his eyes open, however—to behold the visage of divinity for as long as he could—Cas's lips descended and kissed them closed.

_Cas is a cuddler._ Dean enjoyed a private chuckle before allowing himself to be fully swept away on Grace's rhythmic flow, and soon he fell into a deep, life-renewing sleep.


End file.
